At 12:24 pm on Friday a guest requested to stay in our Airbnb, and I accepted the request. Message immediately from Airbnb to state that the guest has 24hours to pay for the reservation and the date will remain blocked, after 24hours the date will then be opened to other guests. I messaged the guest that evening at 8:30…“Your reservation has not gone through as no payment has been made. In order for this reservation to be complete you must enter updated payment details.” At 10:00 pm I messaged again. “Do you still want the reservation”. No answer from the guest. The next morning I contacted Airbnb support and stated that I wanted the reservation for this guest cancelled and I wanted No penalty to me at all. They cancelled the reservation. Shortly thereafter the guest cancelled their reservation, (not sure how that works, but it was a message I rec’d). Needless to say, I never got a last minute booking for the Saturday. I really want to private message the guest who stood me up to state what an inconvenience it was that I lost out on a legit booking because of said guest. As I stated, I messaged the guest that payment had not gone through and he/she chose to ignore it. At the end of the day though, it is the fault of Airbnb to even put through a reservation when the payment particulars are not up to date.
Yes, and I’ve read new guest posts saying they are having trouble uploading their verification ID or credit card info and will lose the place they are trying to book.
Airbnb could eliminate all these hassles by requiring guests to upload all their required information, and wait for it to be approved before they try to book anything.
This situation of awaiting payment occurs fairly regularly for me. What I would say is you waited way too long to message the guest. I think Airbnb only emails the guests that there’s a payment issue. Hosts can see within 1 minute of accepting a request to book that the guest payment didn’t go through. As a host. You should check this every time and message the guest right away. It’s unlikely the guest is ignoring you. It’s more likely they don’t get Airbnb app notifications and don’t check their email and have no clue. If this is their first trip it’s also possible they give up at that point because there’s too much friction to make the booking. But I would say that’s very infrequent. Most of the time the guest replies right away to me and says they will fix it.
On a side note, I had this awaiting payment problem last week but another guest was able to request the same dates. Now I’m double weird predicament because I told the first guest to fix their payment and I told the second guest I couldn’t. Rick set their Now I’m double weird predicament because I told the first guest to fix their payment and I told the second guest I couldn’t except their request right away because someone else was in the process of booking! I waited 17 hours on the first guest overnight and got no replies. So I went ahead and accepted the second guest since they were eager and communicative. A few hours later the first guest comes live and says okay I’ll fix my payment situation. But when they did their reservation was automatically declined because my inventory was zero for that date. Now the first guest got really pissed off. It’s kind of a no-win situation. But basically Airbnb system is stupid as usual. All they would have to do is try to authorize the first guests credit card at the time of checkout , like basically every other website in the world , and notify them of the payment issue before the request goes through. All this could be avoided yet this problem has persisted for years.
That’s really weird, @James333, because a Request normally blocks the dates even if awaiting payment for 24 hrs, so no one else should be able to request those dates while booking A is pending. This has long been a peeve of hosts, that the dates get blocked so no one else can book them, only to have the accepted request fall through after 24 hrs because payment wasn’t secured.
If it’s a pre-approved Inquiry, then that doesn’t block dates, and if the guest doesn’t proceed to book and pay, and a Request comes through for the same dates, that you approve, and payment is received, the request will be confirmed and the unpaid Inquiry will go away.
I messaged right away after request to book to say payment was not complete. At that point you do not have their phone number so you rely on ghem checking the number…next ti.e i will wait a few hours and then get it canceled
Yes, not sure how another guest can request same date as that date is blocked for 24 hours
I don’t think Airbnb will cancel it without penalties to you, as the policy is that guests have 24 hrs to pay. I once called because a request had been “awaiting payment” for 20 hrs and the guest wasn’t responding to messages and asked if they could cancel it.
I said I didn’t think it fair that I should have to decline and take a hit on my acceptance rate in order to open the calender just because the guest hadn’t paid yet.
The airbnb rep told me to just let the request expire and they’d make sure my response rate wasn’t affected, said they couldn’t cancel it without penalty.
Also, sometimes the “awaiting payment” isn’t the guest’s fault, but an Airbnb glitch. I had a guest who had booked, then wanted to add a couple of days to her booking. Her first payment had processed right away, but the date alteration payment showed as “awaiting payment”, even though she had her payment method all set up and it had been charged successfully the first time.
I let her know, and she called Airbnb and the payment went through shortly after.
Probably her debit card or cc balance was low.
Yeah, I’m one of the hosts that was always peeved. It was strange. And I mentioned it because maybe they changed it. Also, since I’m API connected, maybe they changed it for professional hosts. Or maybe a glitch. Anyway, that is what happened. I’ll update if it happens again. Also, the dates were about a month out. So perhaps that influenced the lack of block.
So I have currently a request to book which I accepted immediately, and status changed to “Awaiting Payment”. I didn’t realize for awhile because I clicked accept and put the phone down. It’s for same day (tonight). The guest still hasn’t responded or paid. So I decided to look on my airbnb calendar and see if tonight is still available to book. And sure enough it IS!
So at least for API connected hosts, it seems airbnb HAS fixed this annoyance. “Awaiting Payment” no longer blocks other guests from requesting the same listing / date. Yay!
ABB help file still says it should be blocked. But maybe airbnb decided to let the API availability override their internal calendar. This is actually smart because if a guest can book the same listing direct on my website, it would block the “awaiting payment” guest because airbnb checks my PMS software after the payment is fixed and if inventory is zero, even after the guest fixes their payment, it will be too late, and will automatically decline. So its smart for airbnb to allow their own guests to book even while the first request is “awaiting payment”, because airbnb might get the commission, rather than another OTA.
for reference:
Another case where API hosts have an advantage is when airbnb sends me an email saying that I didn’t accept/decline within 24 hours so my calendar is blocked. Even though I sent messages to the guest and they ghosted ME for 24 hours. Anyway, every time I check the calendar after this email, nothing is blocked for me. So I think maybe the API connected hosts don’t have to worry because even if airbnb blocks the calendar dates, my PMS updates the inventory to 1 available and the calendar is unblocked automatically. Or abb just doesn’t bother to block API connected hosts.
Hopefully someone else can test this when they have an “Awaiting payment” as I’m curious if listing is still available to book for accounts that are not PMS API connected.
What does API mean. Sorry but i dont know what that stands for